Laying down for a valence check periodically?

Page 1 of 1 [ 2 posts ] 

techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,685
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

08 Jul 2021, 10:30 pm

Does anyone else habitually do this? I'm guessing it's something much more common that people just don't talk about, but it seems like a 'type' of action or behavior so divorced from how our culture seems to function or advertises itself as functioning that it almost makes me curious how common or rare this instinct is.

What I mean is - you have your stable sense of self, stress at any given time throttles it, and after a while of racking up stress you're tempted to lay down in the evening, no music or TV, not to sleep but do something akin to what an extreme sports athlete might do if they wrecked where they're laying there with their eyes closed making sure each limb and appendage still works. This is sort of an emotional / neurological / endocrine version of that where you just monitor your body, see what feels right or doesn't feel right, focusing on equilibrium but not pushing particularly hard on anything. It's also a bit about sitting with what's bothering you but then seeing - bright and clear - the degree that your own inner resource has autonomy from the outside world and regardless of what's happened, if you really don't want to be bitter you have opportunities to still take the best of yourself and sort of self-medicate with it, ie. expanding it, still paying respect to the trauma, the immovable obstacles, etc. but still seeing that there's no callow or juvenile movie or TV show plot your life is locked into, seeing that there's no external story that you need to be slave to, and that being your own person you have the space to decide how you want to feel and how you want to face down the facts of the outside world.

It's not complete freedom but it's buying back that 20 - 30% control that you have that starts to fray out under stress, which is with you during the best parts of your life, may seem to disappear under trauma, but seems like it can spring back if you let it.

I feel too often like I live in a world where too many people are dutifully limbic, and rise and fall on the kinds of bad stories that I mentioned above. It's part of why I feel the need to lay down periodically, sort through my valences, and in a strange sort of way it can feel a bit like sorting the hypergraph in the Wolfram sense.

Why I say valence instead of emotion? The level on which I feel like I'm dealing with it, even if it's more by feel, the relationship still feels technical. It's a bit like I'm looking at a living sculpture that might have some irregularities either in the present or extending out into the future and I have the desire to shape or mold it into something that better comports to my desires for what I'd like it to be, where I'd want it to go, or what I'd want it to experience.

For me it's sort of what I've heard some family members refer to as the 'fortress of solitude'. It's a time to recalibrate and I could see this being quite a common introvert thing.

Any thoughts?


_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.


BeaArthur
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Aug 2015
Posts: 5,798

09 Jul 2021, 9:35 am

I meditate sometimes, but usually fall asleep and it turns into a brief power nap. It's all good.


_________________
A finger in every pie.